Henry Austin (architect)
| Henry Austin | |
|---|---|
Tower of the John Pitkin Norton House, one of Austin's most developed works.
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| Born |
December 4, 1804 Mt. Carmel, Connecticut |
| Died | December 17, 1891 (aged 87) New Haven, Connecticut |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Architect |
| Buildings |
Grove Street Cemetery Gates |
Grove Street Cemetery Gates
James Dwight Dana House
John Pitkin Norton House
New Haven City Hall
Henry Austin (December 4, 1804 – December 17, 1891) was a prominent and prolific American architect based in New Haven, Connecticut. He practiced for more than fifty years and designed many public buildings and homes primarily in the New Haven area. His most significant years of production seem to be the 1840s and 1850s.
The paucity of precise information concerned with Austin and a lack of many personal papers (such as diaries or letters) makes a complete bibliography of his life difficult to write. Austin was born in Hamden, Connecticut in 1804 and was the son of Daniel and Adah (Dorman) Austin. He first seems to have worked as a carpenter's apprentice and then began his career in architecture in association with Ithiel Town and Alexander Jackson Davis, although the nature of his relationship to Town and Davis has not been clearly ascertained. In 1837, he opened his own office in Hartford, evidenced by newspaper advertisements. In Hartford, he designed the tower of Christ Church Cathedral (1838), the Wadsworth Athenaeum with Town and Davis (1842, his involvement is problematic), the demolished gothic-revival Kellogg house (1841), and the long-gone 1842 building for St. John's Episcopal Church (Hartford, Connecticut); he also became associated at this time with Nelson Hotchkiss a New Haven real estate developer and designed with him villas along "Park Row" in Trenton, NJ, probably his first major commission.
In 1841, he moved his practice to New Haven where his first significant commission was the now-demolished, Greek Revival George Gabriel House (1841). In New Haven, Austin's style diversified; in one ad, Austin claimed he could design buildings "in every variety of architectural style". He worked in a range of styles popular in the nineteenth century including Gothic, Italianate, Egyptian and Moorish Revival. In some buildings, he employed an eclectic mix of styles, creating varied, exotic formi. His New Haven work left a lasting impression on the domestic architecture of the then-developing real estate projects in the areas of Wooster Square and Hillhouse Avenue. In Wooster Square he designed the Italianate James E. English House (1845), the exotic Indian/Moorish Willis Bristol House (1845), the Nelson Hotchkiss House (1850), and the irregular Italianate villa Oliver B. King House (1852). On Hillhouse Avenue he worked on the James Dwight Dana House (1848) and the John Pitkin Norton House (1849), as well as remodeled the Greek Revival Ithiel Town House of 1836 for Joseph E. Sheffield in 1859 (demolished), encasing Town's structure in an exuberant Italianate shell. In New Haven, Austin made the so-called candelabra column (a column inspired by Indian architecture consisting of superimposed vegetal layers) his signature, as well as elaborate Indian/Moorish lambrequins over windows, and thick vegetal anthemia and tendrils over window surrounds. Other significant works in New Haven include the Grove Street Cemetery Gate in Egyptian Revival (1848–49), Dwight Hall at Yale (1842–1845), the Townsend City Savings Bank (demolished, 1852), the Palladium Building (formerly Young Men's Institute, 1855) and the strange Moorish New Haven Railroad Station (demolished, 1848). His most significant non-residential commission in New Haven was the City Hall (1860), a polychrome, asymmetrical, Gothic Revial structure, which, although significantly altered in the 1980s, still maintains Austin's facade and some interior decorative features.
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